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Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Blade: 440 C hardened to 59Rc,double ground, OAL 9"
Handle: Pink Ivory and Ebony with nickle silver guard,spacers and butt cap.
Pink Ivory, also known as umNini or umGoloty, is treasured as a rare, exotic wood. It grows predominantly in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The tree is protected and can only be felled by a very limited permit. Years ago, pink ivory was the royal tree of the Zulu kings. The wood is very hard and heavy and it has a very fine grain, which allows a high polish.
Ebony is also a very hard and dense wood and excellent for knife handles. It grows in Ceylon, India, Sri Lanka and Western Africa.
Please click on picture to enlarge.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Ivory and Damascus Pocket Knife
The blade and bolsters are made of Norris Raindrop Damascus. Damascus steel was a type of steel used in Indian and Middle Eastern sword-making, originally based on wootz steel, a steel developed in South India before the Common Era. These swords are characterized by distinctive patterns of banding and mottling reminiscent of flowing water. Such blades were reputed to be tough (Wikipedia)
The beauty and serendipity of Damascus seem to be endless.
The scales are elephant ivory one of my favorite materials to work with. Ivory has been valued since ancient times for making a range of items of which knife making is one of them.
The thumb stud has buffalo horn inlay.
The blade has Roman Knot file work on and is honed to a sharp resilient edge.
Please click on knife to enlarge.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

This is a sabre grind clip point hunting knife. The sabre grind is a strong edge format. The bevel starts around the middle of the blade, and proceeds flatly towards the edge.
It features a mirror polished blade 72" blade stock and 1/8" blade depth, hidden tang construction.
The handle has a nickel silver guard and pommel and is made of amber, oosik, spalted mapel and copper with black and nickel silver spacers.
Blade length is 5 1/8"
OAL is 9 3/4"
Click on picture to enlarge

This is a classic example of a Back Pocket knife.
It features premium antique Ivory scales. The attention to detail and fit and finish are so fine that you can not feel where the steel and the Ivory meet and where I have set the shield in the ivory and attached the bolsters to the handle.

This one is sold but I can make one for you. Do not let the opportunity pass to add a knife like this to your collection.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

This is an ivory back pocket with Zulu spear blade.

The Zulu is a nation of Nguni-speaking people in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. They are a branch of the southern Bantu and have close ethnic, linguistic, and cultural ties with the Swazi and Xhosa. The Zulu are the single largest ethnic group in South Africa and numbered about nine million in the late 20th century.

This knife is a very nice "walk and talk" and made out of (pre-ban) Ivory - which is the perfect and very symbolic material for a Zulu knife.

I've added Roman knot file work on blade and spine
and file work on liners.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Although most of the time the materials I use in my knives consist of things that come from mother Earth - in this instance I decided to create a liner locker from an exotic space-age material that is quite literally out of this world.

The scales are made from a special composite carbon material (manufactured by Boeing) used to conduct lightning and static electricity safely around a space shuttle orbiter.

I was lucky enough to be able to purchase one tile of the last 5 that are in existence.